But we see Mr. Grey as we see none of Trollope's other lawyers because of his daughter Miss Dorothy ("Dolly") Grey, "motherless, brotherless, and sisterless," about thirty years of age, whom he sometimes calls into his bedroom in the middle of the night to discuss his cases. They also have more formal conversations, as in this discussion of the effort made by Mr. Scarborough and his younger son Augustus to settle Mountjoy's gambling debts. Here she tells her father that he should lay down the law to Mr. Scarborough:
"The law is the law," said her father.
"I don't mean the law in that sense. I should tell him firmly what I advised, and should then make him understand that if he did not follow my advice I must withdraw. If his son is willing to pay these moneylenders what sums they have actually advanced; and if by any effort on his part the money can be raised, let it be done. … Go there prepared with your opinion. But if either father or son will not accept it, then depart, and shake the dust from your feet."
I can't think of another such father-daughter relationship in any of Trollope's works. The above speech so reeks of wisdom that one suspects the author is merely using Dorothy as a mouthpiece for his own editorial comments on the affairs of his story.
Dorothy herself is one of Trollope's finest female characters. The one o'clock conversations, when she is summoned to her father's room by the "well-known knock" and "usual invitation," afford us an intimate understanding of them both. Unencumbered by devotion to a lover, she goes about her duties with a peculiar devotion that her father only begins to understand after he retires from his practice. She visits her aunt's family every day, though she does not care for them, turning "old dresses into new frocks." She has her own innings, in a sense, when her father presents his junior partner Mr. Barry as a suitor. She reads Mr. Barry's character better than her father has done, and she knows better than to accept his offer.
The woman in the story who is encumbered by devotion to a lover is Florence Mountjoy, who has fallen in love with Harry Annesley and has pledged herself to him by a nod of her head. "A man's heart can be changed, but not a woman's. His love is but one thing among many," she declares to Mountjoy Scarborough in declining his repeated proposal, affirming the doctrine to which so many of Trollope's heroines adhered. Florence shows spunk and determination, standing her ground against her mother, uncle and aunt in the British legation house in Brussels to which she has been brought to clear her head and heart of Harry Annesley.
Trollope was sixty-six years old when he wrote Mr. Scarborough's Family. He completed a short novel and almost completed another before dying of a stroke at age sixty-seven. His skills were undiminished. His overall themes and views were familiar ones; he was now looking at life, if not through a rear view mirror, at least with a bit more detachment and irony than in earlier decades. He was still able to generate and maintain detailed story lines, and he continued his mastery of showing many facets of his characters and events, mostly through revealing the inner thoughts of several characters.
Memorable characters continued to appear in his landscapes. Besides Dorothy Grey and her father, there is the old rascal, Mr. Scarborough himself. The others all marvel at successive revelations of his deviousness, and their assessments show us both him and them. All "London had declared that so wicked and dishonest an old gentleman had never lived." Mr. Barry, after traveling to Germany to unearth the documentation of his first marriage to the same woman, in an obscure village, concluded, "In my mind he has been so clever that he ought to be forgiven all his rascality." And now, "Everyone concerned in the matter seemed to admire Mr. Scarborough, except Mr. Grey, whose anger, either with himself or his client, became the stronger, the louder grew the admiration of the world." Mr. Merton, the medical apprentice who stayed with him the last three months of his life, concluded, "One cannot make an apology for him without being ready to throw all truth and all morality to the dogs. But if you can imagine for yourself a state of things in which neither truth nor morality shall be thought essential, then old Mr. Scarborough would be your hero. He was the bravest man I ever knew."
No Trollope novel is complete without several proposals of marriage, and this story includes four to Florence Mountjoy, some of them repeated; but the scene between Squire Prosper and Miss Thoroughbung, in which Mr. Prosper pursues his purpose of getting an heir to disinherit Harry Annesley, must rank near the top of all Trollope's proposals. Miss Thoroughbung is the sister of a brewer and has money of her own; she also has her own agenda, as Mr. Prosper learns. Her encouragement leads him to the point, and he recites one of the sentences he had composed for the occasion: "In beholding Miss Thoroughbung I behold her on whom I hope I may depend for all the future happiness of my life."
The engagement does not last; it falls afoul of the Victorian equivalent of the pre-nup, in which the would-be bride insists on bringing with her a pair of ponies and her friend Miss Tickle. Other financial considerations were negotiable, but the match founders on Miss Tickle and the ponies.
The visitor from the twenty-first century is allowed a few peeks into the world of the nineteenth: A visitor to Mr. Prosper's country place declines to stay for the night, pleading that he has neglected to bring a dress coat. "Mr. Prosper did not care to sit down to dinner with guests who did not bring their dress coats." And courtship follows its own protocols. Harry Annesley goes to Tretton Park when Florence Mountjoy is there, and he